“Know you what Edward intends for Llewellyn’s daughter?” he asked Moris. “Will has said the king is resolved that she will never marry nor live free. She is a babe in arms, born only months ago and damned because of her father. Already they plan prisons for the sons of any Welshmen who have led the fight against Edward. The fathers will hang and their children be made captive for life.”

Moris rubbed a hand over his face. He had begun to look old in this last year.

“We cannot know any of it for truth. It is yet only rumor and intention.”

In better times, Gryff would have laughed at this optimism. Now he only pulled his cloak tighter around himself, shivering in the January freeze. Hal often said that his father was too good, always expecting reason and justice.

“When they come for me, then will we know it as truth.”

“Cannot William discover what is planned for you?”

Will was at court, and if he knew anything he would never trust such intelligence to a letter – if he would share it at all. Of late Will had grown closemouthed and even more cunning. He valued his place at court and in the king’s trust highly. Mayhap more highly than any friendship.

“Did he know of it and wish to warn me, he would have done it already,” Gryff answered, feeling his heart sink further. It was the first time he admitted to himself that he did not feel sure of Will, who was no longer a lonely boy hoping to make a friend. Will was in line be a great Marcher lord and, as such, would be nearly as powerful as the king himself. Now more than ever, as powers shifted, a Marcher lord could not be trusted to stay loyal to a powerless friend.

“They say the king speaks of such bloody vengeance against the Welsh that any who think to defy him will quake in terror. If I am suspect–”

“But you are not!” Moris was insistent.

This much was true. Gryff had spent nearly a year in demonstrating that his loyalty was to Edward and not to Wales.

“My blood is suspect,” he said bluntly. There was no hope that the king would forget that he was Welsh, and that his father was even now laying siege to a Norman castle. Gryff had to admit it was a most efficient way to end all resistance to Edward’s rule: stamp out the bloodline of every man who fought against it. “I tell you true, if I knew a way to escape these walls, I would fly far from here. I would flee to somewhere safe, though I know not where that might be.”

“Haps you should,” came Moris’s unexpected reply. “If it is your life in the balance, you should.”